[90] See supra, [i. 587]. According to another theory the inoculated blood is regarded as a pledge or deposit, which compels the person from whom it was drawn to be faithful to the person to whom it was transferred. Suppose that two individuals, A and B, become “blood-brothers” by mutual inoculation. Each, then, Mr. Crawley argues (Mystic Rose, p. 236 sq.), has a part of the other in his keeping, each has “given himself away” to the other in a very real sense; and the possibility of mutual treachery or wrong is prevented both by the fact that injury done to B by A is considered equivalent to injury done by A to himself, and also by the belief that if B is wronged he may work vengeance by injuring the part of A which he possesses. To this explanation, however, serious objections may be raised. The belief in sympathetic magic does not imply that injury done to B by A is eo ipso supposed to affect A himself through that part of him which has been deposited in B; it does not imply that two things which have once been conjoined remain, when quite dissevered from each other, in such a relation that “whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the other” (Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 49), unless there is an intention to this effect in the agent. The severed part then serves as a medium by which magic influence is transferred to the whole. Again, it is difficult to see how B could injure A through the part of him which he possesses when that part has been absorbed into his own system, as must be the case with those few drops of A’s blood with which he was inoculated.
Besides marriage, local proximity, and a common descent, a common worship may tie people together into social union. But among savages a religious community generally coincides with a community of some other kind. There are tutelary gods of families, clans, and tribes;[91] and a purely local group may also form a religious community by itself. Major Ellis observes that with some two or three exceptions all the gods worshipped by the Tshi-speaking tribes on the Gold Coast are exclusively local and have a limited area of worship. If they are nature-gods they are bound up with the natural objects they animate, if they are ghost-gods they are localised by the place of sepulture, and if they are tutelary deities whose origin has been forgotten their position is necessarily fixed by that of the town, village, or family they protect; in any case they are worshipped only by those who live in the neighbourhood, the only exceptions being the sky-god, the earthquake-god, and the goddess of the silkcotton trees, who are worshipped everywhere.[92]
[92] Ellis, Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 284 sq. For various instances of village gods see Turner, Samoa, p. 18; Crozet, Voyage to Tasmania, &c. p. 45 (Maoris); Christian, Caroline Islands, p. 75 (natives of Ponape); Grierson, Bihār Peasant Life, p. 403 sqq.
When the religious community is thus at the same time a family, clan, village, or tribe, it is of course impossible exactly to distinguish the social influence of the common religion from that exercised by marriage, local proximity, or a common descent. It seems, however, that the importance of the religious bond, or at least of the totem bond, has been somewhat exaggerated by a certain school of anthropologists. We are told that in early society “each member of the kin testifies and renews his union with the rest” by taking part in a sacrificial meal in which the totem god is eaten by his worshippers.[93] But no satisfactory evidence has ever been given in support of this theory. Sir J. G. Frazer knows only one certain case of a totem sacrament, namely, that prevalent among the Arunta and some other tribes in Central Australia,[94] who at the time of Intichiuma are in the habit of killing and eating totem animals; and this practice has nothing whatever to do with the mutual relations between kindred. Its object is only to multiply in a magic manner the animals of certain species for the purpose of increasing the food-supply for other totemic groups.[95] In his book on Totemism Frazer writes:—“The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense. This is expressly stated of the clans of western Australia and of north-western America, and is probably true of all societies where totemism exists in full force. Hence in totem tribes every local group, being necessarily composed (owing to exogamy) of members of at least two totem clans, is liable to be dissolved at any moment into its totem elements by the outbreak of a blood feud, in which husband and wife must always (if the feud is between their clans) be arrayed on opposite sides, and in which the children will be arrayed against either their father or their mother, according as descent is traced through the mother, or through the father.”[96] In the two or three cases which Frazer quotes in support of his statement[97] the totemic group is identical with the clan; hence it is impossible to decide whether the strength of the tie which unites its members is due to the totem relationship or to the common descent. But even the combined clan and totem systems seem at most only in exceptional cases to lead to such consequences as are indicated by Frazer’s authorities. With reference to the Australian aborigines Mr. Curr observes:—“Of the children of one father being at war with him, or with each other, on the ground of maternal relationship, or any other ground, my inquiries and experience supply no instances. To Captain Grey’s statements, indeed, there are several objections.”[98]
[93] Hartland, op. cit. ii. 236.
[94] Frazer, Golden Bough, i. p. xix. Cf. Idem, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 230 sqq.
[95] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vi. Iidem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, ch. ix. sq.
[96] Frazer, Totemism, p. 57.
[97] Grey, Journals of Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 230. Petroff, Report on Alaska, p. 165. Hardisty, ‘Loucheux Indians,’ in Smithsonian Report, 1866, p. 315.